Professor Paul Jackson has recently co-authored a new book on Securing Sierra Leone, 1997–2013. Launched at RUSI in May 2015, the monograph examines the development and impact of security-sector reform on the state-building process in Sierra Leone.

RTC has been collaborating with the International Development Department (IDD) for a number of years. Our Masters student, Jeffery Hamann, recounts his experience of taking part in an RTC-led conflict simulation exercise as part of his course. The simulation was conducted as a part of the IDD's CHASR (Conflict, Humanitarian Aid and Social Reconstruction) module.

Written by Jonathan Fisher, lecturer in IDD. South Sudan has now been at war since 2013, with no end in sight. And while the two sides focus on defeating each other, the humanitarian situation on the ground is only deteriorating.

This discussion assembled scholars from different fields and of diverse regional expertise to present the different forms of non-Western subjecthood that they identify or envisage in order to discuss the possibility and constellations of non-Western subjecthood and corresponding forms of agency. The event thus made an attempt to link recent theoretical debates about a 'post-Western' IR with insights from other disciplines to show how post-colonial agency operates both within the framework of the international state system, but also appears in more diffuse and less obvious ways that serve to challenge and re-shape this system.

Speaker: Professor Andrew Linklater (Aberystwyth University). The ICCS Distinguished Lecture Series continues on the 18th May with a talk from Professor Andrew Linklater, arguably one of the 50 key thinkers writing in the field of International Relations today. Professor Linklater will discuss his recent research on 'Violence, Civilization and Humanity'.

Speaker: Professor Andrew Kydd (University of Wisconsin). Trust is central to cooperation and it is often taken for granted that trust is higher among members of an identity group than between groups. However, apart from assimilation or creating new overarching identities, we lack a compelling explanation for trust-building.

Heather Marquette leads a team of researchers from IDD who will present their work at the OECD this week. They will share findings with two INCAF Task Teams at discussions of the Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals on legitimate politics and on revenues and services.

Written by Professor Paul Jackson, a political economist working predominantly on conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. A core area of interest is decentralisation and governance and it was his extensive experience in Sierra Leone immediately following the war that led him into the area of conflict analysis and security sector reform.

Written by Professor Paul Jackson. The rapid escalation this year in the numbers of people drowned as they flee in leaky boats across the Mediterranean is a direct consequence of the conflict in Iraq, Syria and north Africa, specifically Libya – where the implications of the Western intervention are playing out in the deaths of thousands, whether from the violence itself or as they try desperately to escape to safety.

Speaker: Dr Suda Perera, Developmental Leadership Program. This seminar discusses the political and physical constraints affecting research within conflict-affected environments, and the growing trend towards remotely gathered data, through an autoethnography of research on armed group dynamics in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Speaker: Dr Monica Di Gregorio, University of Leeds. This study assesses the level of policy integration of climate change mitigation and adaptation in the forestry and agricultural sectors in Brazil and Indonesia, and explores barriers and opportunities to address trade-offs and achieve mutual benefits.

Written by Jonathan Fisher, lecturer in IDD. Jonathan Fisher and David M. Anderson published the article: Authoritarianism and the securitization of development in Africa this January, 2015. We asked Jonathan what drives his research interest in this field and to address some of the issues captured in the article.

Written by Alina Rocha Menocal, a senior research fellow at the Developmental Leadership Program. Despite weaknesses in accountability, Ghana's newly established political system has overseen dramatic improvements in basic services.

Written by Dr Adrian Campbell. The apparent disappearance of Russian president Vladimir Putin between March 5 and 16 provoked a festival of Kremlinological speculation on a scale not seen since the temporary ousting of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the abortive coup of 1991.